Jabberwocky - part 11 - Overload

By Sheila Paulson
Page 1 of 15

Background

Part 1 Link-up

Cally has survived the explosion on Terminal and the crew have escaped
in Servalan's wreck of a ship. While in a coma, Cally dreams the
events of the fourth season, including Blake's death. Traumatized by
her injury, she has lost her telepathy. When the crew, augmented by
Hugh Tiver, a doctor kidnaped by Avon to take care of Cally, steal a
prototype Federation mindship constructed around a living human brain
and capable of bonding with a human in a mental linkage, their
adventures are just beginning. Afraid of finding Blake for fear Avon
will kill him, Cally bonds with the ship, naming it
Jabberwocky. After rescuing Soolin from the Scorpio,
they go to Gauda Prime, where the encounter backfires. Blake is
wounded but is rescued and joins the crew of Jabberwocky.
Cally's telepathy returns and she turns linkage of the ship over to
Blake.

Part 2 Mind-Rape

Blake is back, and in linkage with Jabberwocky, and Servalan
wants to steal Jabberwocky and link with it in order to take
back the presidency. She had meant it to be hers from the beginning.
She uses Witt, a telepath who had worked his way into Avalon's rebel
army on Ryalon base, to wrest control of Jabberwocky from
Blake, leaving the rebel trapped inside his mind. A mental linkage is
the only way to bring him back, and Avon the only one who can do it.
With Cally's help, and using nearly atrophied telepathic skills he had
long pretended he didn't have, Avon is able to draw Blake back from
the prison within his mind. Jabberwocky defeats the rogue
telepath.

Part 3 - Healer

With Blake in control once more, Avon is gradually accepting he was
born a telepath, but his powers were suppressed to the verge of
destruction.

Blake begins behaving oddly, and
problems develop with the ship as Jabberwocky begins to remember his
long suppressed past - his memories had been blocked when his brain
was used in the mindship. In the meantime, Jenna Stannis and Del Grant
have teamed up and have one objective: Kill Avon. When their plan goes
wrong and Tarrant is gravely wounded, only the combination of the
mindship and Avon, the untrained telepath are able to save the pilot's
life, and at this point, Tarrant becomes Jabberwocky's linkmate. Jenna
joins the
crew.

Part 4 - The Froma

On a mission to draw in potential rebel support, Blake and his crew
are asked to steal the Froma, an alien artifact that cannot be stolen
as it destroys anyone who tries to remove it from its world. When Avon
and Hugh are captured, Avon receives an unexpected telepathic contact
- from the Froma itself. The strange device proves to be a sentient
organism, the last of its kind. Able to link telepathically with Avon,
it wants to bond with him on a permanent basis, but Cally helps, and
the entity is taken to Kahn where it can be among the newly reviving
Auronar.

Part 5 - Decoy

When the Jabberwocky crew pick up a message that suggests
IMIPAK is being taken to a remote world, they are in two minds about
going after it, partly because of the danger to Avon and Blake and
partly because it may be a trap. But Blake refuses to leave IMIPAK in
Federation hands. The mission is complicated by the fact that there
is a potential sleeper agent on the ship who might betray them.
Everyone suspects everyone else. The sleeper proves to be Soolin, who
was programmed long ago. The IMIPAK device proves a dummy, part of a
plot to capture the rebels, but they are able to escape, taking the
false device with
them.

Part 6 - Kyl

A teenager comes to Ryalon to join the resistance and causes a great
deal of trouble inadvertently when he encounters the crew of the
Jabberwocky. Concealing his true identity, he is torn between a
desire to become a member of the resistance and the need to confront
his long-lost father - Avon. Kyl proves to be programmed, part of a
long-standing plot to get Avon, but Orac is able to deprogram him, and
the plot is thwarted when Kyl's former guardian arrives and nearly
kills Avon. Kyl and his father make wary
peace.

Part 7 - Clone

Realizing mention of IMIPAK will draw Servalan back to the planet
where it was left, Blake plans a mission to find and destroy the
weapon. Trailed by a mysterious ship, and protesting all the way, the
crew arrive to find that Blake's clone is still there. When the
mysterious ship arrives and Dayna dies in an accidental confrontation,
Servalan captures the clone only to find she has the original Blake.
The clone overpowers Blake and replaces him on Jabberwocky.
When the captain of the mysterious vessel proves to be Dorn Suliman, a
friend of Tarrant's and the son of the man Jabberwocky once was. Avon
plans a rescue of Blake, using the dummy IMIPAK. Dorn warily decides
he will try to get to know his father
again.

Part 8 - Stand-in

A mysterious cube proves to be a prison for an alien mass-murderer,
who escapes - into Tarrant's body. With the link broken, Jabberwocky's
sanity is in jeopardy, and Vila offers himself as a temporary
link-mate. With Tarrant's body in stasis and the alien in possession
of the ship's computers, only Vila can find a solution that will drive
him away and restore the ship and Tarrant. The link is returned to
Tarrant once the being is
defeated.

Part 9 - Choices

When Avon's son Kyl stows away on a mission and winds up being
kidnapped by Servalan, she plans to use him in trade for Blake. Left
with an impossible choice, Avon is overruled by Blake himself, and
with Jabberwocky's help and the development of a gestalt linkage, the
whole crew forms a mental link to confront Servalan and rescue Kyl and
Blake.

Part 10 - Program

Jabberwocky and Orac design a program that can hold a complete human
personality. They use Dayna's personality - and the program becomes
self-aware. Some of the crew want to use the program to get Dayna
back, using an android body. Avon finds this impossibly distasteful
and tells Blake he will leave the ship if the program becomes part of
the crew. In spite of his objections, Avon winds up teamed with Hugh
on the planet where the android assembly plant is located, in an
attempt to rescue the Dayna android before Servalan can steal it. They
escape in a defective ship with Servalan in pursuit, but with the help
of Dayna, she is
captured.

Overload

Blake glanced over his shoulder, frowned, then shut down the board
he'd been working on and turned to survey the flight deck. Those of
his crew who were present included Tarrant and Jenna squabbling over a
flight plan, Vila chatting idly with Soolin and Hugh on the forward
couch, and Cally and Dayna, their heads bent over the weapons'
console, which had been stripped down for fine tuning. Everyone was
there but Avon. Blake had been so involved with everything that had
happened recently that he had accepted Avon's more frequent absences
from the flight deck as just another of his attempts to prove he
didn't need any of them, when everyone knew he did.

But it was more than that. Lately
Avon had found excuses for avoiding linkage and he had completely
avoided the gestalt. Before Dayna's return, Avon had participated in
it with some reluctance, but he had participated. In the month
since their return to Ryalon and their base, he had found excuse after
excuse to avoid it.

Blake had missed it entirely. He
always sought Avon out for such things but Avon had been busy. First
he'd been studying the processes that had enabled Orac and Jabberwocky
to recreate Dayna, then he'd declared a need to revamp Avalon's
computer systems, something he'd long delayed doing because he'd
proclaimed it boring busy-work best suited for low grade techs. Then
his son Kyl had invited him on a camping trip. Blake had wondered at
that, for Avon was no nature lover and while he cared for his son, he
seemed ever so slightly wary of spending time alone with him. But he
had gone and returned tanned and fit looking, with only the faint
shadow in his eyes, when he thought no one was looking, to warn Blake
that all was not well with him.

Blake had tried a few times to
urge him to talk, but discussing his problems had never been Avon's
way and he had fobbed Blake off with impatience. Now Blake cursed
himself for not realizing something was seriously wrong. Before all
this had begun, Avon had avoided heart to heart discussions, but he'd
done it with humour. This time, he'd withdrawn completely, and Blake
hadn't even noticed.

He caught Cally's eye and tried to
summon her over without attracting everyone else's attention, and she
said something briefly to Dayna and joined him. "What is it, Blake?"
she asked in an undertone.

"Where's Avon, do you know?" he
asked, maintaining a casual tone.

"He's somewhere on the base," she
said. "I think Avalon sent for him. Something to do with Servalan."

Blake hadn't expected that. "What
about Servalan?" he asked more loudly than he had intended to do, and
heads came up all over the flight deck.

"She nearly escaped last night,"
Vila volunteered. "She bribed a guard - or seduced him - I'm not sure
which. They only just stopped her, and Avon was furious. He said
something had better be done with her before she managed to get away
and take this ship with her." He glanced around at the others and let
his eyes return to Blake. "We got to know her better when you were
gone after Star One, Blake, and Avon got to know her best. He doesn't
trust her a centimetre, but there's something between them anyway. Of
course she tried to kill you, and he won't forgive her for that, but
something's up. Better be careful, Blake. Having her here is
dangerous."